


Break of day

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Series: and a long white veil [1]
Category: Trainspotting (Movies), Trainspotting Series - Irvine Welsh
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 17:51:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17472179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: In one timeline out of every thousand, there’s a chance for an opportunity without a betrayal.“Davie Renton optimistically believed that we all hit a point in life where we strived to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Neither of his remaining sons had gotten to that junction yet. He hoped that by the time they did, they hadn’t ventured too far down the wrong track to get back.” - Irvine Welsh, Skag BoysAU from mid-way through the first movie, but takes character notes from T2 into account, as well as selective book canon, especially characterization of Allison (although I do use the screenplay spelling of Allison's name).





	Break of day

**Author's Note:**

> The biggest thanks in the entire world to the peerless la_dissonance, who has been here for this fic through its email-chain birth over a year ago, and has been such a killer beta in this final stage, and to Aria also for a fantastic, thorough beta, but ALSO for letting me drag them to the theater to see T2, and for coming out agreeing that THAT is what we call a TRANSFORMATIVE WORK, godddamn, Danny Boyle.
> 
> In terms of canon, this is movie fic, and this is movie 'verse Sick Boy, I've just used book canon to color in some of the childhood and background blank spaces the movie leaves.

She’s a remarkably happy baby, especially for one who’s been toted around on a full tour of the skag dens of Edinburgh since before she could crawl. Simon remembers, after his youngest two sisters were born, the way he hadn’t been able to get through the night for the shrieking until well after they were walking. When he’d complained, his mother had always assured him that he’d been worse. Simon has had Dawn with him these past three days, though, and this is the first time she’s woken up fretful in the middle of the night, and even now, all she’d needed was a clean diaper, a few moments of fuss, and she was asleep again on his shoulder.

He’d thought, at first, that it had been good that Mark had left town for London -- Mark may think of himself as sensitive and understanding, but he can be a moody, passive-aggressive bastard when he’s short on sleep. But taking care of Dawn is falling somewhat short of his wildest nightmares, and as he paces up and down the bare living room floor, her body a warm, baby-smelling weight against his shoulder, it strikes Simon all over again how absolutely bloody typical it is that when the going gets tough, Mark Renton gets going. It’s the kind of itchy, vehement frustration that whispers to him in a voice that sounds more like his older sister than like the Bond tones that usually color his inner monologue, that says it’s bothering him largely because it didn’t occur to him fast enough to do the same.

Not that it’s the same situation, of course. Dawn’s a pretty little thing, no one would ever mistake her for Renton’s weasely ginger spawn. And even if there had been a resemblance, Simon is actually, to even his own continued surprise, the name on Dawn’s birth certificate. 

He wasn’t _with_ Ali when Dawn was born, neither physically nor in an emotional sense, but Ali’s always been a mate, and he’d stopped by the day after she’d given birth to peer at the baby and kiss the top of the exhausted new mum’s head. She’d looked at him kind of wistfully, but she hadn’t asked him to stay. She had told him, though, that she was listing him as Dawn’s father on her birth certificate. It was his first time hearing the baby’s name, and when he’d looked into her tiny face, he hadn’t found it in him to argue, had even signed the form acknowledging paternity. It had felt dream-like at the time, and it he hadn’t thought of it again until almost a week after Ali had left Swanney’s place in an ambulance, beside a gasping, blue-faced baby.

It had been luck -- though it’s still unclear to Simon whether it had been bad luck or good luck -- that he’d actually been in his apartment and relatively sober to answer Ali’s call when it had come, since it had been the first time in days.

“They’re putting me in a residential rehab program,” Allison had told him. “I have to do it or I’ll lose Dawn, so I need you to take her.”

“Me?” Simon had asked, sure the fact that he’d never spent so much as an afternoon with the baby had been clear in his tone.

“You’re her father,” Allison had said, and she’d said it before, but this time it sounded like an accusation. “I’ve never asked you for anything, you owe me this.”

When Simon still hadn’t answered, her voice had cracked as she’d said. “If it’s not you, they’ll place her with my family,” and it had felt like a life-line.

“Isn’t that better?” He’d asked. “Your father’s had kids before,” and he’d tried not to think of how Ali had been avoiding her family since before Dawn was born, since her mother’s funeral. Ignoring the thought was easier before he heard her start to cry.

Crying women aren’t exactly Simon’s forte, but most of the times he encounters them, he’s able to summon a detached outward sympathy. Ali’s different, though, Ali’s a mate, not a mark, and it tugs at something in him that reminds him of childhood, of his mother after his bastard father had left again. “I’m not -- Ali, I’m not clean,” he’d reminded her, a little reluctant. “I’m hardly appropriate supervision,” he’d pressed on, ignoring the implication.

“If my sister gets her hands on Dawn,” Allison had said, venomous, “If my father does, I won’t get her back, after. You know what they think of me now.”

Simon had, reluctantly, remembered a few things Ali has confided in him, postcoital, over the years. Of the things her father and sister think of her now, they’re none of them flattering.

“You’ll bloody well get clean,” she’d hissed to him, quiet, like someone might be listening, and he’d supposed they might, he’d had no idea where she’d been calling from. “I know you can, you always kick it disgustingly easily.” Then, still soft, but less afraid, she told him, “You’ll come to the hospital in a few days, you’ll wear your stupid suit, and your stupid Simon Williamson charm, and you’ll tell them that though we’ve parted ways romantically, we are committed co-parents, and that you’ve been worried about my deteriorating state while I’m taking care of Dawn for months. You’ll thank them for getting me help. You’ll take care of my baby until I can come back to her, and after that, we’re both going to do better.”

There has always been some steel in Ali, even if she has always believed the things Simon says more readily than she should. There was that steel in her then, and when she’d said that, he’d believed her. He’d thought of Dawn’s tiny, blue face when they’d all thought she was dead, before she’d coughed up the lump of whatever-it-was-she-shouldn’t-have-eaten-but-did, and Swanney shoved her and Ali out the door of the apartment before calling an ambulance, so no one would search the apartment. 

Simon had done as Ali said, and now he’s leaning against a wall in his empty living room holding a baby who has, apparently, no one better around to take care of her for the moment, and Mark _fucking_ Renton is in London partying with his pygmy cockney friend and scamming the government for multiple giro checks. It’s three in the morning and the sod is probably still awake at some horrible party, so without thinking too much about it, Simon makes his way over to where the phone is attached to the wall, and dials Mark’s mate Nicksy in London.

The phone rings for long enough that Simon considers whether it’s possible that he might not get an answer, before a sleepy voice Simon vaguely recognizes as Nicksy’s answers. 

“Is the Rent Boy there?” Simon cuts right to the chase because he vaguely remembers having worn out his welcome in this flat last time he was in the city, and there’s no need to stay on the line long enough for Nicksy to remember it.

“He’s asleep,” Nicksy says, which seems obtuse and unhelpful to Simon.

“Well wake him up then,” he says, and then, to hurry things along, “It’s an emergency.”

Nicksy grunts, but then Simon hears the clatter of the phone being set down on its side, and the rustling of Nicksy shuffling off, presumably to get Mark. He waits for Mark to pick up, but there are no further sounds. Twelve minutes later, he gives it up as a bad job, hangs up the phone, and trips over his own feet a little making his way over to the pulled-out dresser drawer on the floor he’s had Dawn sleeping in.

…

In the five days since he’s gone to collect Dawn from the hospital, and held her as a couple of officials had escorted Ali off, Simon has stayed pretty close to home. A few runs out to pick up nappies, formula powder, to cash his giro check, but all under cover of darkness, all with Dawn clutched nervously to his chest as she’d burbled nonsense and stared around with wide eyes. This means he ought to be expecting it, when Frank Begbie drops by and demands that Simon come out to the pub tonight.

He should be, but he isn’t. If he’d been expecting it, he’d have thought twice before answering the door to the impatient rapping, but as it was, he’d just set Dawn down for a nap, and had been intending to open a beer and flip through a magazine, so instead of thinking through the people in his life these days who might come knocking, he’d answered the door.

Francis Begbie is not the type of man it’s reassuring to see beside a baby, and Simon thinks so as a man who hadn’t objected when his child learned to crawl across his dealer’s floor, so his standards are not high. Frank demands that Simon come out with him, and Simon finds himself wanting to agree -- Begbie is a psychopath, but Simon could use a bit of normalcy right now, and Begbie’s craziness is, at least, the familiar kind. Still, “I can’t,” he tells Begbie, gesturing to the drawer in the corner of the room where Dawn in sleeping fitfully.

“What’s that?” Frank thunders, and Dawn lets out a little wail.

“You remember, Ali’s in rehab,” Simon tells him, which should close the case.

But then Begbie says, “And she’s got you babysitting?” and his tone is mocking and unimpressed enough that it makes Simon bristle. Begbie is a moron, it doesn’t matter what he thinks, and his underlying implication that taking care of a baby makes Simon less of a man would make Renton laugh himself sick, but something about it still needles Simon.

Begbie goes on, “An’ don’t let Ali get away with just saying it’s yours, either. Could be anyone’s, she wouldn’t know.”

Simon has no real interest in engaging with that, but he manages to hustle Begbie out of the apartment when Dawn begins to complain by promising that he’ll find a babysitter for tomorrow, and meet him out at the pub.

…

When he says it, he isn’t even really thinking about it, but it does seem like a reasonable kind of promise to make. In the cold light of the next day, though, he’s not sure how to keep it.

It isn’t that he doesn’t know women -- he knows plenty of women, scads of them, legions -- but he doesn’t know women with whom one could leave a baby. Instead, he knows underage junkies, and attractive fly-by-nights who wouldn’t be caught dead near an infant, and his own mother and sisters, who he can’t admit to having Dawn to _now_ without making them furious that he hadn’t told them sooner.

Rents knows a girl, though -- a young one, the type who looks like she’s actually at the age when babysitting would be a normal thing, and she’d been uptight and disgusted with Simon enough, the few times he’d run into her, that he’s sure she’s not on anything harder than the occasional spliff. This time, when he calls Nicksy’s, he’s told that Mark’s got his own place, as well as an _actual job_ , and he’s thrown enough by it that he hangs up without getting a new number. That’s alright, though, because when Mark skipped town this time, he was in enough of a rush that he’d barely cleaned out his things, and Simon finds a note from Diane in a stack of loose papers by the bed.

Dawn crows from where she’s crawled under the frame after a rolling cloud of dust bunny, and it’s probably safe enough, if Mark has been sleeping on it, but still, the bed looks rickety, so Simon scoops her up under one arm to carry her into the kitchen so that he can dial Information, get the number he needs, and get started charming a wild teenage girl’s suspicious parents into liking him enough that they’ll encourage Diane to look after his baby.

...

“Where’s her toys?” Diane asks.

Simon hadn’t taken much for her from Ali’s place, just a few pieces of clothing, blankets, bottles. There’d been a soft toy in Dawn’s cot at the hospital, a sky blue, monkey-looking thing that made a noise when shaken, and Simon has been rolling a tennis ball for Dawn to crawl after along the floor sometimes, but other than that, there isn’t much in the apartment that fits the bill.

“She’s a baby,” Simon says lamely, feeling strangely inadequate. “She pretty much amuses herself.”

This is true, as far as Simon can tell, but if the look Diane is sending his way is anything to go on, it doesn’t make him sound great. He makes a note of it in his head, and wonders, vaguely, how Renton had stood the judgement in this girl’s face. He supposes there’d be some sort of satisfaction in a one-off, but he knows he’s seen them together a few different times.

“I do this,” Diane reminds him, “And you’re bringing me back some good hash, and some E.”

“Of course,” Simon spreads a grin across his face. “And in exchange, you’ll give my progeny all the care and attention illicit substances can buy.” When he’s almost out the door, he shouts over his shoulder, “Don’t wait up!” before letting the door slam behind him.

Through the wood, he can hear Diane shriek, “I am not staying the night here! You had better be home by two!”

…

Three days later, Mark shows up.

Simon answers the door with Dawn’s sick-up running down his shoulder, and a thermometer in one hand. He’s sure she’s dying, and when he sees that it’s Mark, and not someone more useless (like Spud) or more annoying (Diane, Begbie), he almost sags against the door frame in relief. Instead, he shoves the grubby baby in Mark’s direction, tells him, “Great, you can give her a bath while I change.”

Dawn, it is eventually revealed, does not have a fever, and by the time she’s thoroughly soaked Mark in bathwater, she seems much more like herself. All in all, it’s nearly an hour since Simon opened the door before it occurs to him to ask, “What, exactly, are you doing here?”

“Diane called,” Mark says, and of course she did, or course her call actually went through to Mark, she probably called at a reasonable hour, at the location where Mark was actually living. “She said someone had the bright idea to trust you with a baby? I didn’t believe it so I had to see for myself.”

“Well? Feast your eyes.” Simon’s not entirely sure the tone to take, here -- the image he’s built up his whole life is hardly one of _family man_ , but he’s here and he’s trying now, and he’s also not about to go around showing weakness.

“Where’s Ali?” Mark asks. Simon is fairly sure Dawn doesn’t understand words, yet, but she lets out a fussy half-cry at that, just as if she did. Simon thinks it’s probably a sign of her good taste, getting fed-up about being held by Renton. He holds out his hands for her and attempts to raise an eyebrow.

“You still can’t do that,” Mark tells him, not handing over the baby. He bounces her a little instead, and she quiets, wide-eyed and interested. “You should practice in a mirror. Maybe when you’re touching up your roots.” Just to be infuriating, Simon is sure, he raises an eyebrow back, flawlessly.

“My daughter, please?” Simon says with as much dignity as he can muster in the grubby, bath-splashed sleep shirt he grabbed off the floor to change into. He’s distantly aware that he hasn’t described Dawn that way out loud before. He settles Dawn against him, wrapped in a towel, and says. “Ali’s in rehab. They noticed she was coming down when she brought Dawn to the hospital, didn’t they? Mandatory residential program.”

“And she left Dawn with you?”

“She thought--” he doesn’t like telling Allison’s secrets -- he doesn’t even really like knowing them -- but it’s _Mark_ , he’s hardly got a right to judge. “She thinks if she leaves Dawn with her father, she won’t get her back, after.”

Mark is quite for a while after that. He leans down and pulls the plug from the bath, and the water is reaching that low, sucking, almost empty point by the time he says, “Would that be such a bad thing?”

A small part of Simon would like to agree with Mark. The rest of him would very much like to punch Mark in the face. After a breath, he does neither, and instead points out, “I’ve kept her alive so far,” before wincing at his own choice of words.

...

After announcing that they’ll be going out that night, Mark calls Kelly. Simon knows Mark had been kind of seeing Kelly before he left for London this last time, but he’d thought this particular evening out had been meant to be centered around his own semi-sudden attack of accidental parenting, not getting Mark laid.

Mark shakes his head. “Kelly’s Ali’s friend,” he explains. “She watches Dawn all the time, and she’ll want to see her again, she’s happy to watch her tonight. I can’t believe you haven’t even called to tell Kelly how she is.”

Kelly does give Simon a filthy, poisonous look as she comes in the door, but he’s not sure if it’s for monopolizing Dawn the last few days, or for not spending any time with her before now. He doesn’t ask, just makes a point of kissing Dawn’s tiny cheek before handing her off to Kelly, then leaving the apartment immediately. He’s annoyed, tapping his fingers and his feet, at the moments Mark takes inside the apartment, talking to Kelly, before he follows.

“Took you long enough,” he grumbles, but Mark just grins irritatingly and hands him a cigarette. Simon thinks about dropping it just to make a point, but he does, actually, want one, so he just continues to hold his hand out, eyebrows raised, until Mark hands over his lighter as well. It isn’t terrible to have him home again.

…

Later, when they get back in, Kelly stays a while. There are a few cans of lager in the fridge, and Simon expects Mark to sit down next to Kelly, but instead he folds himself down to the floor, leaning against the arm of the couch where Simon is sitting.

“I’m proud of you,” Kelly says to Simon, tone arch. “She’s still got all her toes and everything. How often have you taken her out to try to pick up girls?”

Simon feels a twinge of embarrassment that he hasn’t even thought of that. Mark asks Kelly, “Would that work? Seems odd.”

“I’ve always thought it was strange that anyone falls for his shit,” Kelly tells Mark, nodding in Simon’s direction. “Everyone loves babies, though. Surely it couldn’t hurt.”

“ _I_ don’t,” Simon says, and wonders if he should clarify something about how Dawn is different, or whether that’s somehow implied by his newly-admitted parenthood.

“That’s because you’re dead inside,” Mark says, tipping his head back so the crown touches Simon’s knee, and there’s something about the looseness of this conversation that feels like it should belong to a night full of far more substances. It makes the inside of Simon’s bones itch.

He clears his throat and asks Kelly, “Was she okay tonight?” and it doesn’t feel strange to know when to ask the right questions, social cues have always been his friends if he lets them be, but it feels strange the way he actually wants to hear the answer.

“Good as gold,” Kelly says, which is disgustingly sticky, but she doesn’t appear to want to be paid for babysitting this evening in E, so Simon will let it pass.

…

When Kelly finally leaves, Mark lugs the duffle he brought with him from London back into the room he abandoned, the one Simon was about to put an ad in the paper about -- the landlord is getting testy about the rent, so while a roommate isn’t ideal, it’s likely that getting one is the sensible thing to do, and he has the sense that parents are supposed to be sensible. Proper parents, that is, not parents like his, and certainly not parents like the ones he and Ali have been so far.

“It worked this time,” Simon warns Mark, “But you can hardly expect me to hold a room for any time you decide to swan back in. Next time I’ll have passed it off to someone with an income.”

“Next time?” Mark asks, a weird, anticipatory smile hovering somewhere around the corners of his mouth.

“Next time,” Simon confirms. “Unless this is your way of telling me that, now that you’ve joined the London yuppie _elite_ , and have a _job_ , you won’t be back here to visit the little people.”

“How’d you know about that?”

Simon opens his mouth, decides he doesn’t want to answer that, closes it, and finally settles on, “Hunch.”

“Well, you know,” Mark says, leaning back against the door frame. “I don’t think real estate’s really _for me_. It’s the language of it -- buying, selling, equity, mergers. Doesn’t give my poet’s soul room to _breathe_.”

“So I don’t need to put an ad out about renting your room just yet?” Simon is pretty sure he keeps his tone arch, colorless. It’s not a question with an answer that matters, after all. One roommate is much like another.

“No,” Mark says, weird smile hovering around the corners of his mouth. “Not just yet.”

...

Mark’s not bad with her -- with Dawn. This could be because, as Simon has observed in the past, she’s a remarkably agreeable baby, or perhaps because, in Ali’s worst moments, Dawn hasn’t always been that well cared for, and so her standards are not high. Secretly, though, Simon suspects that it’s just because Mark, in all his gangling awkwardness, can be weirdly smooth and competent, when the mood takes him.

He also appears to be clean, now, which is both strange and probably a good thing. Strange, because Simon doesn’t think he’s seen Mark sober longer than a few days since he dropped out of uni -- longer, maybe. The Rent Boy, he’s just one of those _guys_. Something about the skag seems to get to him in a more intense way than it does with other people. And _good_ because -- well. Because Mark is one of those guys, and sometimes it seems like he’s going to slide under the influence for the evening and not come back out. Simon’s been along for the ride with him plenty of times, and when he is, it seems fine, but when he’s watching from the outside, there’s something about it that isn’t so nice to watch. _Pathetic_ , he thinks, Connery drawl firmly in place. _No dignity at all, eh Shimon?_

So Mark’s clean, and he’s decent with the baby, and strangely unruffled when she spits up down the back of his shirt, or yanks on his ear like she thinks it will come off, and these days, when Simon hits him with a piece of trivia from his battered film guide, Mark will look down to where he’s bouncing Dawn in his lap and ask her “So what do you think?” while giving her an extra enthusiastic bounce so she’ll giggle, and he can reply to her, “Yes, I think so, too,” before making an _abysmal_ guess.

It’s a bad joke the first time he makes it, which means it should be _significantly worse_ the fifth time, or the twenty-fifth, but somehow, by the third hour of the most energetic baby in the world being as resistant to being put down to bed as if she were on uppers, it feels like it’s taken on a hysterical edge, and Simon’s not quite able to stifle his own laughter in response. He covers it up with a disappointed shake of his head, and says, “Pathetic, Renton. It was ‘73, by the way.”

“Well, you can’t blame me,” Mark tells him. “Look at my partner. She wasn’t even a twinkle in -- in _your_ eye, in ‘73.”

“Blame it on the baby, sure, you’re a class-act.” Simon tells him, holding out his arms to take Dawn. Walking her around the apartment in his arms hasn’t sent her off to sleep the last three times, but he has a good feeling about this one.

...

Simon hadn’t let himself think, except in tones of constructed relief, about what would happen when Ali came back and took Dawn away. Surely it wouldn’t ever be like this again -- maybe he’d end up like some of the separated dads he sees at the park, chasing some kid across the grass as the indulgent mum watches from the sidelines for the allotted few hours before she takes the tyke home with her, and the bloke goes back to his real life.

Surely he’ll never have moments like these again; Dawn falling asleep against his shoulder, and barely even waking enough to flutter her eyes open as he sets her down to sleep; Dawn crashing an open, clumsy, baby hand down into the bathwater and giggling as it soaks him; Dawn holding her arms out to him so he can pick her up from where she’s sitting propped up on the floor. Surely this is a stolen moment, the one he gave up by the sin of never actually wanting it. Surely he doesn’t even want it now.

So there is relief, when he gets the call from Ali, and she says she’ll be released the next day, that she’ll head to his place. The relief is strange, though, and tempered with an odd, hollow feeling.

Still, there’s something nice, something _right_ about seeing the cautious joy in Allison’s face when she first sees Dawn, and Dawn’s own slow mirroring of her smile. There’s something that clicks, when Ali settles Dawn against her hip -- less than a year since Dawn was born, and Simon has known Ali since primary school, but somehow, Dawn looks like a part of her.

There’s something good about that moment of reunion, but there’s something else there, living in his chest about it, too.

…

But even now that Ali’s out, she doesn’t even try to take Dawn away; instead, she moves _in_.

She kicks Mark out of his room, which Simon is generally in favor of, except that instead of making up a cot, or curling up pathetically on a piece of floor (Mark’s always been able to sleep anywhere, it’s not as cruel as it sounds), when night falls, and they’ve finally got Dawn off to bed, Mark follows Simon into his room, and pokes him until he moves over.

“Go _away_ ” Simon tells him, and he can hear the whine in his own voice, but he finds himself shifting over a little, anyway, and once he has, he’s tired enough to admit to himself that it feels kind of nice, the warmth and weight of another body in the bed. It’s been ages since he’s picked up, and even longer since he’s had a hookup spend the night -- not just since he’s had Dawn with him, but since before the day when Dawn had been rushed to the hospital, and if he thinks about it, he thinks it’s probably the longest stretch that he’s slept alone in his adult life.

Plus, Mark is familiar, from a hundred sleepovers as kids -- the normal kinds that happen because you and your mate want to stay up late talking, or have to get up early for some scheme, and the other kind, where things are rough with your parents, so your mum sends you to your best mate’s place to get you out of the way -- to a thousand times dropping off or passing out in the same squat or on the same drug since then. Simon knows the odd way Mark breathes in his sleep better than he knows the sleep habits of any bird he’s ever convinced to take him home with her. Really, it’s no wonder that he’s out like a light while Mark’s still shifting around in bed beside him, trying to get comfortable.

…

The thing is, it isn’t out of nowhere, but it’s usually a _being high out of their fucking minds_ thing. Or, at least, Simon thinks it is. With Spud, it’s some kind of asinine, in love with the whole _world_ kind of thing, and with Ali, it’s something of a softened version of all the times they actually fuck, like the H has just sanded all the edges off, and the tense urgency melts into something a bit more like clumsy groping and slow, kissing on Swanney’s floor. With Mark, though, even when they’re out of their minds, in the rare cases where they’ve ended up kissing, it’s felt a little bit like something else.

Simon knows Mark’s grand theory -- all about aesthetics, fuck all to do with morality, and he’s confident enough in his own aesthetics that he’s never tried to deny to himself what the way Mark’s eyes catch on his face sometimes might mean. For his own part, there’s never been any reason to follow the thread of that strangeness, though -- no reason to see where it might lead. Mark has always been around, he’s hardly needed a tether, and it has always felt like there would be plenty of time to tease out the potential nuances of a hard grip on Simon’s wrist in the midst of an ostensibly loose, messy, stoned kiss, or an unexpected moment of sincerity on Mark’s face after waking up together, an intensity of a stare that should by all rights be postcoital, but somehow, incongruously, wasn’t.

But there’s something different lately, and it isn’t even about Dawn, and the way having someone so small and so always-growing around makes individual moments feel more finite, less endless -- although it does. Simon is used to feeling like time with Mark is never in short supply, like it will play out and unspool for years and decades. But this time -- well. Mark left and came back, but when he left the last time, it hadn’t quite felt like he would come back; had felt like a more permanent break than it had ended up being. Even though Mark shows no signs of wanting to move back to London any time soon, it feels a bit more like he _could_ than it has since he dropped out of university.

Maybe that’s why Simon wakes up, the night after Ali comes back from rehab, the first night Mark follows him back to bed, sees Mark’s immobile, sleeping face pointed in his direction, and he doesn’t flop in the other direction and fall back asleep, and he doesn’t get out of bed and get on with his life, either. Nor does he kiss Mark -- he thinks about, for a moment, staring through the watery moonlight at Mark’s furrow-browed, sleeping face.

Simon doesn’t _want_ to kiss him, though -- he wants to _be_ kissed, and that’s a different desire entirely. Luckily, Simon is pretty good at getting what he wants. Often, just being bold enough to ask for it is enough, whether what he wants is a kiss, a fuck, a free drink, or a punch in the face, and that’s as true from Mark as from anybody. The world favors people who know what they want, Simon thinks as he pokes Mark in the side. He may not be sure exactly _why_ he wants this squint-eyed ginger he’s known since they were both eating paste to kiss him, but want it he does. He can get what he wants now, and think about why he wants it later. He pokes Mark again, and Mark flails out an arm to whack him in the face.

“Renton,” he hisses, and looks over to see Mark’s eyes blink open to squint at him through the gray dimness of the air.

“Piss off,” Mark grumbles, which is hardly a promising start, but Simon believes in himself, believes in the power of his own magnetism, so when Mark goes to roll away from him, Simon reaches out, grips his arm in a way that starts out demanding and then goes softer when Mark stops trying to move away, shifts up to wrap warmly around that scrawny bicep. Without breaking eye-contact, Simon darts his tongue out to touch his top lip -- nothing crude, just a quick movement, a way to draw the eye. He shifts closer in a way that must look accidental, murmurs “ _Mark_ ,” tone softer than he usually lets it get. And then he waits.

And waits. It’s probably only a handful of seconds, surely less than a minute, but for a few breaths it feels endless, Mark’s unblinking gaze, eyes wide, until Mark shifts onto his side to face him, reaches out one of his own hands to grip Simon’s hip, and leans in. Simon has always been good at getting what he wants.

…

Breakfasts with Ali used to look like: a cigarette, some instant coffee in a mug that looks a lot like the pattern in Simon’s mother’s kitchen and which he was pretty sure she’d taken from her own parents’ home when she left, curled up in the scarf- and fabric-festooned bedroom area of the smart bedsit where she lived when she still had that government job; 

_or_ a whole pile of the two of them and their friends, four or six or ten of them, out all night on a bender and tripping all over themselves and each other in to order full breakfasts as the sun came up; 

_or_ a shifty look at six a.m. or six p.m. or fucking three a.m. as they both came back to awareness at Swanney’s and neither had enough cash or credit to keep the good times going, and they ran into each other on their way out the door.

These days, breakfast with Ali happens whenever Dawn decides it’s time to be awake, which sometimes isn’t too far off from the crack of fucking dawn she’s named for, which is why Simon feels justified in telling Ali, “This is your fault. Biology is destiny or. Something. The power of suggestion.”

“You can go back to sleep,” Ali tells him waspishly, which is fair enough. But really, if he was going to wake up over the sound of them in the kitchen once, he’ll only wake up again. And when he thinks of climbing back into bed beside Mark in the light of day, even if it is, in fact _his own bed_ , well. There’s no need for whatever the hell that feels like, is all. 

When he doesn’t turn back towards his bedroom, though, she offers him her coffee cup without turning around, spoon full of vomit-colored baby food still making its way towards their crowing offspring’s mouth. Simon takes a big gulp of the coffee, figuring he’s got maybe thirty seconds before Renton follows him into the kitchen and re-appropriates the cup. Mark’s always been a light sleeper, all nervous energy and paranoia, and it’s only gotten worse since the junk.

He’s not wrong, which is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse, but feels, in this watery morning light, like a fairly neutral fact; Mark wakes up, he staggers into the kitchen, he steals Simon’s coffee cup, and Simon finds himself only scowling reflexively, not even really annoyed. He knows what comes next, anyway.

Mark takes the expected second gulp, winces, thrusts the half-empty coffee back into Simon’s hands, and pushes off of the table to put the kettle on for tea. “Three and a half sugars for me,” Simon reminds him, pushing a little, keeping his voice breezy like he’s just assuming Mark has pulled a second mug out of the cupboard behind Simon’s head for him.

Mark only grumbles, “Disgusting, you heathen,” in what sounds pretty much like assent to Simon, and then asks, “Ali?”

“Milk, please, if you’re offering,” Allison requests, distracted.

And that’s morning, pretty much; musical chairs with coffee and tea until Simon has had some of Mark’s milky tannin-stew builder’s, more of Ali’s coffee, and even a few sips of his own sweet, lukewarm mug, until it’s time to dig out his dictionary and pick today’s word ( _pabulous_ , of, like, or pertaining to food), which of course he needs to abscond with Dawn for, because his child, he’s decided, is going to be the cleverest of the bunch, she’ll march into school her first day and dazzle, just like her dad.

When Ali takes Dawn with her out to the shops, well, _that’s_ a good time to drag Mark back to bed and pick up where they left off last night, because Simon’s not getting any younger, time’s a-wasting, Simon hasn’t been out on the pull in _ages_ and Mark is _there_ , and if Mark is going to be something Simon _wants_ now (baffling, yes, but an apparent fact just the same), then Simon is damn well going to have him.

...

And then they get up and do it all again. It’s hardly the most exciting time in his life, and Simon makes sure to make a few showy complaints, just to avoid losing face, but he’s surprised, a bit, by how fine it is generally. But the good times, as Mark would say, can’t last forever, and Ali has only been back from rehab about three weeks when Francis fucking Begbie comes charging up to their door looking for a place to hide out from pursuit for armed robbery.

“You can’t be here if the police are after you, we have a baby!” Ali yells.

Begbie brushes her aside like she hasn’t spoken, and when she reaches out to grab his arm aggressively enough that Simon is a little surprised that she doesn’t get backhanded in reply, Franco says, “Like you haven’t had her in worse places.”

Simon wastes a breath to be oddly impressed that Frank actually knows that Dawn is a girl before quibbling back, “The _place_ is fine, it’s the current company she’s objecting to, Franco.”

It’s a dangerous game, saying something that’s hopefully not enough to really piss Begbie off, but also just enough of a vocal objection for Ali to feel that Simon’s backing her up. Behind Begbie’s back, Mark shakes his head, quick and signaling. On the one hand, there’s nothing in Simon that likes taking orders or suggestions from Mark, who always thinks he’s so clever. On the other, Simon hasn’t a clue the best way to proceed here, and if Mark thinks that he does, well, at least if he’s wrong Simon can blame him for it later.

“Want a beer, Franco?” Mark asks from behind Begbie’s back, calm, conciliating, still shaking his head in warning but this time looking past Simon to Ali.

“Don’t mind if I do!” Begbie agrees, jocular and still high on his own defiance from his crime.

When Mark comes back with the can of lager, Begbie claps him on the shoulder, tells him, “Knew I could count on you, ya beauty!” with a poisonous and not-at-all-subtle look in Simon and Ali’s direction, before jumping up to stand on the couch and spew (apparently worthless) jewelry and (apparently fake) firearms all over Simon’s admittedly hardly pristine living room. The man is a cartoon character, and a terrible influence for Simon’s impressionable young offspring, who will have style if it’s the last thing Simon does. Begbie is dangerous, and worse, he’s incredibly crass, and in this moment, there’s nothing Simon wants more than to see him gone. Whatever probably-stupid plan Mark thinks he has in the works cannot start soon enough. Simon wonders vaguely if the lager Mark has been plying their most psychopathic friend with is drugged.

Apparently not, though, or if it is, it’s a slow-acting spike, because Begbie is still going strong, and, frankly, getting rowdier, by the time the fridge is empty and he swings around and addresses Ali, and says, “Run to the shops and fetch us another, eh doll?”

Ali looks like she’d about to mutiny, but Mark’s doing that _thing_ again, the mouthing-behind-Begbie’s back thing that’s going to get him stabbed if Begbie turns around at the wrong moment. He’s mouthing _please_ to Ali, and he looks like he means it and Simon _does not know_ what this plan is supposed to be.

“Pack of smokes, too,” he throws in, maybe as some kind of signal to Ali that he’s on-board with whatever it is that Mark is trying to do. He’s not sure that he _is_ , but they’re deep enough in it that they might as well try. Ali shoots a look at him that would probably be threatening, if Frank Begbie weren’t in the room, threatening all of the violence available in the particular interaction. Ali does go, though, and Mark bundles Dawn up to go with her, which is. Well. There’s something about seeing her out the door that feels like relief, but. If this is going to go badly enough that having her out of the way is important, Simon doesn’t especially want to be in the room for it either.

He tries to edge his way towards the kitchen, but Mark shoves him back, shouts to Frank, “Show this waster how to pick a damn horse, bastard’s going to bet away all the rent money again,” which is a filthy lie, Simon’s not one of frivolous gambling on horses, everyone knows it’s too much of a crapshoot to be worth it.

Everyone but Begbie, that is, and Renton’s a canny bastard, he knows Begbie’s hardly going to let Simon slip away after an opening like that. Begbie turns on the TV and cranks up the volume, and by the time he’s into it enough to be shouting at the screen, Simon thinks, that’s probably when Mark calls his tip in to the cops.

Mark comes back into the room not long after he’s set them of this path, which is horrifying enough when Begbie is just waxing rhapsodic about a certain thoroughbred’s gait, but takes a turn for the nightmarish when the flashing lights of a police wagon come into view from outside the front window.

Begbie’s on his feet in an instant, eyes wild, and Simon’s not far behind him, before he remembers that he’s actually pretty clean these days, and that the most incriminating thing of his they’d be able to find is a crumpled half-baggie of hash in the bottom drawer of the dresser. Mark hops up too, and the nerves on his face are definitely real, even if Simon is beginning to have a suspicion that it’s not because this intrusion is unexpected.

“Stay cool, Franco,” Mark says, and “You know what this block is like, they could be here for anyone,” and now Simon’s sure of it. Begbie looks desperately at the flashing lights visible through the front window, and this is _daft_ , if Simon thought Mark was going to plan something so stupid, he would have been out the door with Ali earlier.

“He’s right, Frank,” Simon hears himself saying. “You don’t want to make a break for it and draw attention to yourself if they’re just here for a noise complaint for Steve and Janie from down the hall.”

 _Incredibly_ stupid.

Franco’s eyes dart to the door, to the back window, back to the door again, and that’s when the knock comes.

Begbie doesn’t wait, barely spares a moment to flash a betrayed look at both Simon and Mark, to hiss, “I’ll fuckin’ kill you both, see if I don’t,” before he’s shoving his way down the back hall, clearly looking for a window. Mark raises an eyebrow, _infuriating_ , before going to where the police are smashing at the door and opening up. By the time they catch up with Franco, he’s half-out the back bedroom window, dangling over the three-story drop. He’s spitting mad and cursing as they haul him in and back through the house, out the door.

When they’ve given their statements, when the yelling, swearing Franco has been pulled out of the window frame, out of the apartment, and then shoved into the back of the police car, Simon looks over at Mark, who is leaning against a wall and looking drained, and informs him that, “That had better just be part one of your plan, because as it stands, if they can’t get enough evidence to put him away, he’s going to come right back over here and murder us both.”

Mark brings his hands to his face, presses down against his eyeballs until he must be seeing stars, murmurs, “Oh, they’ll put him away,” almost lovingly, and Simon is _definitely_ planning on following up on that certainty, especially given the fact that it is his _skin_ on the line, but it’s then that the phone rings.

It’s Ali, calling to ask if the coast is clear to come back, and that’s another thing; “Nice of you to get Ali out of the line of fire, thanks for thinking of me, too, mate,” Simon tells him, putting as much venom into it as he can.

Mark’s hands are still in front of his face, pressed down against his eyes, his temples, like he’s overwhelmed, like he’s scared, like he’s only just now thinking through the _monumentally stupid_ thing he not only just did, but got them all on the hook for. And. Good. He should be scared. Simon thinks of a hundred bar fights, a handful of primary school schoolyard fights, of that American tourist bleeding out on the floor, and they should all be bloody well scared.

“ _You_ haven’t recently almost lost custody and been involuntarily committed to rehab,” Mark says, after a pause.

“I _do_ , however, have a face that Frank Begbie will be perfectly happy to kick in the next time he gets his hands on me,” Simon says, because the fear and overwhelmedness on Mark’s face is good, it’s appropriate, but it’s just a start, Simon _deserves_ to see a shot of guilt thrown into that particular emotional cocktail.

…

The guilt, when it comes, isn’t about putting Simon in danger, the way it should, by all rights and justice, be. Instead, it’s guilt around _Begbie_ , which is really just too much. Ali comes back into the room after putting Dawn down for bed and cracks open the lager she somehow, inexplicably, did actually run down to a shop to pick up and bring back with her, and Mark thumps his head back against a wall.

“He’s a mate, though,” Mark says, like anyone was asking.

“I think we can safely say he _was_ by now,” Simon says, because if Mark is going to offer up openings like that, he’s damn well going to take them. Mark thumps his head back against the wall again, two taps, controlled but still hard.

Mr. Renton -- Davie, Mark’s dad -- is one of those union, labour-type old boys, though. Which is, actually, relevant, because Mark Renton may think he’s a rebel, think he’s a nihilist (one who believes that life is meaningless, two weeks ago’s word), but he grew up fond of the old fellow, and somewhere deep down, he really does buy into all of that matey, loyalty shite. 

“It wasn’t fair of him to come here and put us in that position, Mark,” Ali says, and her voice is softer than it usually gets with Renton, soft with understanding.

Mark nods, but he still looks twisted up with it; guilty, and not even guilty about the thing that _should_ be worrying him, which is that he’s made an enemy of one of the most dangerous nutters in the city, on all of their behalf. Mark cuts his eyes towards Simon, and there’s something searching in the look, but Simon doesn’t have an answer for what he’s asking and quite honestly doesn’t want to.

Instead, he does what he does best, which is brush right past it without taking the time to acknowledge what he’s brushing past. “Look, it’s in the past, mate,” and oh, maybe not the best word-choice there, but he’s not going to wince about it, no backing down, “What we need to be thinking about is how we make sure we’re out of town, out of reach, and out of touch by the time our good buddy Franco resurfaces, because I happen to like breathing.”

For a second, Mark doesn’t answer, but after a breath, he nods, shakes his head not in denial but more to clear it, then nods again. “Getaway plan. Right.”

“We’ve probably got a few years, before he’s out,” Simon allows, “But by then, we’ve got to have a plan that’s rock-solid.

…

A rock-solid plan does not appear that night, but a few flimsier ones do, and it’s true that they have a few months, maybe even a few years to figure it out. Simon may have to cozy up to -- June, or Frank’s sister, or whoever it is who will be getting information about his release, so that they’ll know what’s coming, but he can do that, he can take one for the team.

“I’ll just bet you can,” Ali slurs a little, most of the lager gone and the three of them sitting on the floor with their backs against the couch. She’s listing into his side, and Simon’s not much of a cuddler when he’d not high out of his mind, but the warm weight of her is nice; she feels closer than she has been since she got back from rehab.

Mark’s on his other side, which is stupid and decidedly _not_ symbolic of anything, but also kind of nice in its own way. Renton’s got his own hands up behind his head like he was about to pull a yawn-and-stretch on Simon, but then got distracted or thought better of it, maybe. Simon nudges him in the ribs with his elbow, says, “Unclench, mate,” and then he’s got Mark’s arm wrapped around him and Ali’s head on his shoulder, and the only thing that feels wrong with this picture is that they’re all still sitting on the floor.

...

When Ali says she’s getting ready to take Dawn, move out, and find her own place, Simon honestly expects himself to be pleased. It’s what he’d assumed she’d do, when she first came back from treatment a few weeks ago, and it’s not like he’s ever signed on to be a full-time anything-at-all to Dawn. So Ali says she’s looking at apartments, and Simon waits to be happy about it. He’s still waiting when Mark picks up the ringing phone, and they all find out that Tommy died.

It’s a few days until the funeral, and Ali has pretty much fully taken back responsibility for caring for Dawn in the last few weeks without Simon even noticing it, so he’s got plenty of time to go out that night and pick up someone pretty at the pub. _Get back to my life_ , he thinks viciously as he straightens his tie in the mirror. Behind him, he can see Mark wander over and lean against the frame of the bathroom doorway. “Still crooked,” Mark says, quirking an eyebrow vaguely in the direction of Simon’s tie.

“It’s not,” Simon tells him, because it _isn’t_ , but -- bloody _Mark_ \-- now he’s got to check or he’ll be fidgeting about it all night, so he leans forward to peer into the mirror again. Perfectly straight. Simon knew it. He has a feel for these things.

“She’s serious about moving out,” Mark observes. Ali has looked at two apartments that afternoon alone.

“Appears to be, yeah,” Simon allows.

“If you’re going to say something,” Mark says, still leaned with a hip cocked against the door, arms crossed, “now’s the time.”

“Say something?” Simon says in his best disinterested tone, shifting his focus to fuss with his hair, careful not to train his eyes even on Mark’s reflection in the mirror.

“You know. About how you want to play happy families, now. Sick Boy and Ali and baby makes three.”

“Don’t talk shite,” Simon tells him, like there was ever any hope of that. “Can’t think of a role I’d like to play _less_.”

Mark hums like he doesn’t quite agree, which is _asinine_ , as if the bloody _Rent Boy_ , of all people, could possibly know more about what Simon’s feeling, about what Simon wants, or what Simon could do, than he does himself.

“I’ll tell her I’ll move out, if you like,” Mark says, abruptly. “Give the nuclear family the space to detonate into domestic bliss,” and _that_ , that’s just too much, Simon whips around, away from the mirror to face him.

“ _You’re_ hardly the only thing standing between me and the lovely Allison and a long white veil, mate. If wedded bliss was in the cards, there wouldn’t be anything your mangey arse could do to stop it.”

“So you won’t miss me, then,” Mark says, a weird, half-smile on his face.

“Of course I won’t miss you,” Simon hisses, “Because you’re not bloody going anywhere.” He has the strangest feeling that he’s losing this argument, and he’s not even sure what it’s meant to be about.

“I’m not?”

“Hardly,” Simon tells him, with as much dismissal as he can muster. “Don’t you dare tell Ali anything.”

It’s time for him to be going now, it’s time for him to find less infuriating company. He’s suffered the tragic loss of a dearly departed friend, these last few days, after all. Surely that’s got to be worth a few sympathy shags.

…

He’s still thinking about that strange, half-conversation with Mark the next day as he leaves last night’s paramour’s apartment, and starts to make his way back across town to his own abode. He’s not sure how thinking about how utter imbecility of Mark’s assertion translates to what he does next, though.

“You don’t have to go,” Simon tells Allison, just a few steps in the door in the morning light and it already feels belated, as she scrambles around the house looking for her earrings so she can head over to Lizzie’s, because, _Poor thing, she must be devastated._ Simon doesn’t see why that should be -- Lizzie has seemed pretty much like herself since she chucked Tommy, and he’s reasonably sure she never went round to see him, in Tommy’s last, dying months. Simon hasn’t been round to see him much recently, either, but then, Simon never claimed to be in love with him.

Ali shoots him a withering look and says, “I don’t have to, no, but it’s called friendship, Simon.” She always calls him Simon, a courtesy he’s always appreciated, but it’s the rest of the sentence that catches him off-guard. It takes him a breath too long to realize _she’s_ still talking about Lizzie, but when he does, he waves a hand, like he can wipe the thought away.

“Not Lizzie. Go or don’t go to her, I don’t care. Though you may as well leave Dawn with me, she hardly needs Lizzie bloody MacIntire weeping all over her, does she? She gets plenty of nightmare fuel just from me and from you, I’m sure.”

“So what _do_ you mean, then?”

“I mean you don’t have to _go_ ,” Simon says, and that’s quite enough of that, the emotion in his tone isn’t calculated, he didn’t put it there, and he _doesn’t like it_ , but somehow, it’s still there in his voice as he goes on, “You don’t need to find a new apartment -- we’ve been muddling along alright, haven’t we?”

Simon thinks they have, anyway. Simon thinks it’s actually stunning and a little bit unrealistic, how well they’ve muddled. He’s actually pretty impressed with himself -- not that there’s anything a go-getter of a young man like himself can’t do if he puts his mind to it, but he might have guessed, in the past, that child-rearing and peaceful cohabitation might be just a _little_ outside of his wheelhouse, and, well, look at him now. Except that Ali clearly doesn’t think so, and she’s leaving.

Still, “More than alright,” she allows, thin smile on her face, and that feels like it should be an opening, feels like Simon should be able to _win_ , but there’s this odd little look on her face that he can’t place, and she’s shaking her head, saying, “And who’d have ever guessed? You and me and _Mark Renton_ and a baby. But we’ve been more than fine, I feel better than I have in ages, it’s why I think I’m ready for this next step, Simon.”

And that’s awful, that’s the worst thing she’d said yet, it can’t be allowed to stand; it’s too bloody _sincere_ , he’s embarrassed _for_ her.

Also: “Then what’s the problem?” She sighs but doesn’t answer right away, and Simon thinks of the weird tension of the way she’d said _Mark Renton_ , of the odd conversation with Mark the night before, and maybe that’s it, maybe there’s something -- off, maybe Ali does want what Mark thinks she does, despite all previous indications to the contrary, maybe, maybe, maybe.

“Is it Mark?” Simon asks, and isn’t quite sure what he even means by it; as far as Ali’s concerned, Mark has been a bit of a dream of a roommate. He’s free childcare, he’s been clean, and it’s Simon’s bed and space he’s been invading, not Ali’s.

Ali clearly does know what _she_ thinks he means, though, and it’s something Simon isn’t sure he likes, because her face softens in that way that Simon only ever wants to see when it’s a reaction he’s engineered -- like she’s seeing through to a soft-underbelly he does not, in fact, posses. “No, it isn’t Mark,” she says, stumbling. “You know I don’t have any problem with--”

“Gingers?” Simon interrupts because he doesn’t think he’s up for hearing about whatever Ali thinks she doesn’t have a problem with.

“Right, gingers,” she agrees, and there’s that soft, indulgent smile again. “But the Begbie thing--”

“We’ve got months,” Simon tries, which is true.

“Yes, but that’s what your life is like, yours and Mark’s,” she says. “Mine too, or it has been, but it can’t be anymore. Not for Dawn. You understand, don’t you? I told you when I asked you to take her. We need to do better, and that means getting -- getting _away_ from all of that.”

“I could get away, too.” Simon is pretty sure of this ( _I can quit at any time_ , and it’s more true when he says it than when any other waster on junk does, ask Swanney, ask anyone) but he’s even more sure that it’s important, in this moment, that Ali believes it.

“You probably could,” she allows, but it doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t feel like he’s won. “But I don’t know that you _will_. You haven’t yet, have you?”

And that’s that, isn’t it? There’s nothing more to say here. There’s nothing to say and nothing to do except go out and track down one of the legions of women who would _not_ want to move out on him if he happened to be the father of their hypothetical babies, and who will unwittingly prove it to him by taking him home with them so he doesn’t have to be in the house to watch Ali move out, and by having athletic sex with him to prove their enthusiasm for his person and presence. Simon grabs his blazer on the way out the door; he doesn’t intend to be back here until well after the funeral.

...

It’s _Mark_ he’s looking for -- Mark who has a surprisingly robust savings account socked away from his most recent time in London, and Mark who isn’t nearly careful enough in shredding his bank statements. Mark in all his bewildered and bewildering glory has the ability to bankroll this opportunity for Simon, if only Simon can pull it off.

Mark, though, when Simon locates him, is not alone. In fact, he’s very much in company, standing in the middle of Simon’s tip of a living room, swaying about the room with Dawn in his arms like some kind of _natural_ with infants. Ali, who hasn’t been handing Dawn over to Simon much, the last week, choosing instead to keep her close, seems entirely unconcerned with this ginger interloper’s hold over her infant daughter. She’s lounging back against the shredded arm of the sofa, taking a long, slow pull from a spliff, when Simon walks in.

“Setting an example, are we,” Simon says, and he hardly even means it, it just slithers out of his mouth. Apparently, she’s just stoned enough now that she doesn’t really care what he thinks, though; she flicks him a lazy two-finger salute and blows a smoke ring, as Mark wanders over to the stereo to flip over the tape he has on.

“The prodigal returns,” Mark says, and he’s smiling. “Here we are, slaving over a hot tape deck while you’re out doing god-knows-who.”

It is not, as these things go, a bad opening, although he hadn’t initially been planning to open this conversation up to where Allison is now leaning backwards over the arm of the couch, stubbing out the joint on the floor and reaching her hands out for the baby, a stoned-smiling peanut gallery.

“Much as I’d like to start to reverse some of the murderous damage the two of you have done to my social calendar,” he tells Mark, all dignity and poise, as Mark wanders over to the couch to sit beside Ali, pass Dawn over, and then sprawl out along the cushions like the reprobate he is (an unprincipled person, or, secondarily, a sinner who is destined for damnation, four weeks ago Sunday’s word, appropriately enough), “I have actually been out on business.”

“Oh?” Ali asks, cutting a glance up at him before training her gaze back down to where she’s bouncing Dawn in her lap. “And what business is that, then? Solicitation or blackmail?”

“Mergers?” Mark asks like the absolute shit that he is. “Corporate espionage? Money laundering?”

“You’re not far off,” Simon says, because it sounds good. “ _I_ am seeking a solution to the Francis Begbie problem that _you_ have so recklessly endangered my entire growing _familia_ with, including my poor, innocent _bambino_.”

Mark blinks at Simon like he’s not impressed, but Simon is fairly sure that, if he kept digging down that particular vein of guilt, he’d hit pay-dirt eventually. A pleasure for another day. For now, “ _We_ ,” he tells them, drawing the word out and gesturing to everyone in the room, “Have got to be able to get out of town on a moment’s notice, and we probably want to get started sooner than there is an immediate need for, so we’re safely far away before that maniac rejoins the land of the living. But if we’re going to be able to even make it to Rome or Miami or the south of France, never mind make a go of it, we’re going to need capital. Liquid assets, as it were.”

“I suppose you’re bringing this up because you have an idea?” Mark asks, tone annoyingly skeptical. Still, it serves its purpose, offering up an opening pretty much on a platter.

“As a matter of fact, young Renton, I do.”

…

Mark thinks it’s a stupid idea, which is hardly a surprise, since Mark has always shown a stunning lack of courage and emotional fortitude when it comes to the hard truths and tough necessities of the modern world.

“Come on,” Mark whines, like a _coward_ , “It’s a _skag deal_ , not a _tough necessity_.”

“It might be both,” Simon says, because when Mark is behaving like a child, he has a terrible habit of dragging Simon down from his usually-impressive heights to Mark’s own level.

“It’s not even properly a _plan_ , it’s just a large amount of heroin!” Mark says. “And today. On the day we buried Tommy.”

“It’s an _opportunity_. Tommy was never one to throw away an opportunity, you know that.” It sounds pretty good, anyway, and even if Tommy _was_ , it doesn’t mean he gets to rob Simon of this one, especially not now that he’s dead.

Help comes from an unexpected quarter. Ali chimes in, “Simon’s right, Mark,” and it’s welcome support, even if her face is a bit screwed up to do it, like she had to brace herself to get the sentence out.

Mark fixes her with a _look_. It is not an impressed one.

“Well, you know as well as anyone,” she goes on. “You stay in the same place, with the same people, you’re one bad day away from doing the same things.” There’s something dark under her words, and Simon wonders who _she_ ran into at the reception after Tommy’s burial. “If we stay here, we’re all a few bad days away from right where we started.”

And that’s good, that’s great, Ali’s got the pathos of the situation tied up in a bow, all Simon needs to add is the incentive.

“Think of the money, Mark,” and then, “we’ve been on the other side enough times,” and Simon can picture it, can feel it, more immediately than he’d like; he and Mark, staggering, junk-sick, across town, undignified as anything, pouring their last pennies into one more _just one more_ hit. “It’s almost fair, that we get out on a last score.”

There’s a pause, and it’s just long enough for Simon to wonder if none of that landed, and then Mark says, “Alright, I’m in.”

And that should be that, except that Ali says, “Me too.”

...

“You can’t!” Mark tells her, because he is an _idiot_. 

She _can’t_ , it’s true, but he also can’t go around _saying_ it like that.

“What my tragically unenlightened and sexist friend is saying, I think,” Simon tells Ali, “Is that while a woman’s place is not just in the kitchen or on the homestead, but any place she damn well pleases, and while you would clearly be an asset to any endeavor you might choose to lend your attention to, of the three of us, _one_ of us needs to stay with Dawn, and I am the one who has contacts in London, and Mark is the one who will be putting up most of the money, and who we’ll need to sample the product.”

“Like hell I am,” Mark replies, which is usefully distracting, but doesn’t quite do the trick, since Ali just builds off of his reply. “Like hell am _I_ trusting our way-out fund to a couple of unreliable junkies like you, you’d be out the door with the money before you’d even gotten around to _deciding_ to cheat me.”

Simon lets his voice go stiff, lets his tone go distant, because really, how _dare_ she? “I can’t understand what I’ve done to make you mistrust me like this, Allison,” he says, and waits for the guilt to roll in, “But I can only say that I’m truly sorry for whatever it is.”

Mark flicks a bottle-cap at him. “Only half the things you’ve ever done,” he says, like a traitor. “Someone does have to stay with Dawn, though, and somehow I think if he,” and here he jerks the neck of his bottle in Simon’s direction, “Is the one person you could think to leave her with in rehab, then probably neither of your parents is on the table.”

...

Cathy Renton opens the door, and Simon feels, suddenly and abruptly, about eight years old. This could be because, for some reason, _he_ is the one holding Dawn, and Cathy has known Simon since he was seven years old; even if she’s willing to buy into his patter enough to be charmed by him, she also knows him well enough by now to be a little appalled at the thought of him with an infant.

“Mum,” Mark says, and if Simon was him, he’d start with a winning smile, but Renton has always been a gloomy bastard, and Simon supposes that if he broke character now, it would only look suspicious, “We need a bit of a favor.”

Luckily, at that moment, Dawn chooses to burble a little grin, and point delightedly at one of the gaudy tchotkes Cathy Renton has taken to keeping on the mantle again, now that all of her boys are either grown or dead, and none of them are prone to throwing sports paraphernalia around the room recklessly anymore. She’s a charmer, Simon’s little girl, and she’s already learning exactly which buttons to push, just like her papa. Cathy Renton reaches for her like the giggle is all it takes to win her over, following Dawn’s pointing finger and saying, “Like the kitties, do you?”

Ali smiles a for-public-consumption smile, and says, “We’d be ever so grateful if you’d be able to look after her for just a bit, Mrs. Renton. I’d ask my father, of course, but he’s been having such a hard time since my mother’s death.”

Cathy’s face softens, and she really is a lovely woman, it’s no wonder Mark always saved a visit to the familial home as a last resort in his rounds of ripping people off at the height of his habit. In the end, though, Simon has to hand it to her, it’s Ali’s vulnerable portrait of a young mum with no mother of her own that seals the deal, and as soon as Dawn is safely ensconced in the arms of an unrelated-but-grandmotherly figure, they’re off.

…

So there’s testing the product, which Mark objects to, yes, but not strenuously enough to really make Simon believe he means it, and it’s a little contemptible, Simon thinks, how clearly, despite his own resolve, he desperately wants the hit, and how much he enjoys it when he gets it.

( _”It’s good,”_ Mark says, tone as fervent as Simon has ever heard it, and Simon tries to ignore the answering squirming itch he thinks he can almost feel in his own veins.)

And then there’s the bus ride.

(“I was bisexual once, too, you know,” Ali tells him, half-drunk and whispering, leaning on Simon’s shoulder, while Mark sleeps off the high stretched out across the double-seat across from them, and that -- that absolutely feels like a filthy bedtime story he should convince her to elaborate upon in more detail at a later date. For now, though -- for now they’re carrying large amounts of heroin on their way to the kind of drug deal that could get them all some serious time if they’re caught, there’s no reason that hearing Allison of all people use the word “bisexual” should be what makes him the most nervous tonight.

“I don’t know if that’s how it works,” Simon says, quiet, after a moment. “I don’t know if you’re bisexual while you’re in the act and then not again, later.”

“It works for me however the hell I say it does,” Ali says, and nuzzles into the crook of his neck, and Simon thinks he’s never come quite so close to loving someone before in his life.)

And then there’s the deal itself and it’s _agonizing_ , because Simon has _contacts_ , he has enough to get them in the door, but he also knows they have no _leverage_ , if he doesn’t like this deal, he’s not about to flounce off and take his business elsewhere, and the guy with the briefcase _knows it_. They get fucked out of at least several thousand pounds, and Simon kind of wants to hit something, but also, they get it done and they don’t get arrested, and there’s only so much Simon can complain, even in his own head, about _sixteen thousand pounds_.

...

And then they’ve got the money, and it’s lovely, all dirty paper-and-linen smell, stacks and stacks of it, edges of the bills soft and honest with wear. Simon thinks about doing a runner, of course, because honestly, who wouldn’t?

Well, Ali wouldn’t, probably. She’s got more of an honest streak to her than any self-respecting addict, even the former kind, should be able to have held onto. She’s also always had a bit of a sentimental side about Simon himself -- hence the birth certificate, probably, despite the stunning lack of evidence that he’d be any kind of asset to their offspring’s life. The way Ali trusts him _just enough_ has always been baffling, useful, and the kind of non-renewable resource he’s always been just-on-the-edge-of-careful enough not to abuse. Once it’s gone, Simon thinks, it will probably stay gone.

So Ali probably isn’t planning on running out with the money on _him_. Running out on Mark is another story, but then, she’d hardly be going in on a skag deal at all if Simon wasn’t the intermediary, never mind one involving _Mark bloody Renton_ (Simon doesn’t think he’s being cocky there, just honest; credit where credit is due, and _Shimon, hats off to you, my boy_ in this case, a whole hell of a lot of credit is due), so the point is pretty much moot.

Mark himself is another question. He’s got just enough ruthlessness in him for Simon to be able to respect him a bit, at least most of the time, and the whole Begbie business proves that he’s growing into himself with age. So it’s possible, but Simon thinks of Mark hustling Ali and Dawn out of the apartment before things get ugly with Begbie, about Mark showing up at his door when Simon was covered in baby sick, about Mark stealing his coffee in the morning. Mark’s still soft, Simon thinks. Still embarrassing, and worse again now that he’s mostly clean. So that’s fine.

And then there’s Simon himself, and he could do it. Both of the people on the barstools beside him are here because he wanted them to be, and he knows if he bolted, they’d hardly be able to coordinate with each other enough to get back at him, at least not in a shattering way. Simon could do it.

...

“No!” Ali protests, two pints into their ill-gotten gains, when Mark of all people makes the obvious suggestion; that London, right here, could be where they start their brand new life on the straight and narrow, as a happy non-nuclear commune of an entirely unmarried family. “We are not starting over again somewhere you’ve already shown _today_ that you have ties to the criminal underworld.”

“Darling, I can find ties to a criminal underworld anywhere you _look_ , just watch me. I’d find the gambling action in a rest home for the elderly.”

Mark snickers like he did when they were in school and Simon mouthed off in class, and Ali cuts a glare in his direction and goes on, “Sure,” although Simon doesn’t think she fully believes him, like she doubts his cunning or business acumen, “But the point of starting _over_ is not to fuck it up this time. No drugs, no getting arrested, no being friends with nutters like _Francis Begbie_.”

Simon isn’t sure he was planning on signing on for what she’s describing -- what’s life if you can’t get a little bit of a scam going, after all? -- but he sees her point; staying out of trouble is a lot easier if you keep it strictly small-time, and Andreas and his associates are definitely bigger fish in London’s bigger pond.

“So what then?” He asks. “Some kind of village in the hills we can scandalize?”

“Are you joking?” And there’s Mark, Simon was wondering how long he’d manage to keep his gob shut. “They’d run us out of town with pitchforks.” Ali giggles, but Simon is pretty sure she knows as well as he does that Renton’s probably right.

Instead of answering directly, Simon flags the barkeep down. “Another round, folks?”

Simon nods magnanimously -- god, he loves having cash to burn -- and asks the fellow, “What’s the least exciting, most middling, ex-industrial hell of a mid-sized city you can think of?”

...

_“You’ll take care of my baby until I can come back to her, and after that, we’re both going to do better.”_

_”Choose life.”_

[end]


End file.
